Can Unconfessed sins destroy the Soul?

Which is worse to take a crime and hide it from the world or to confess it openly unto the world and take the consequences good or bad? Does the guilt eat away at you and you eventually tell anyway or not? If so why tell to begin with? In the opinion of the author, I think that it is worse to take internal punishment than external because external eventually will deteriorate, unlike internal that …

…Through this example you see how confessing you sins and taking an earthly punishment is less harmful to yourself than hiding a secret deep inside your soul so your conscience would eat away at you. Dimmesdale internal punishment hurts him more than Hester's external punishment ever did. Dimmesdale grows sick and dies from his internal punishment and Hester's eventually diminishes. Proving that in this case external punishment is easier to take psychologically than internal punishment.